Vengeful Bride

‘Feeling better?’

‘Yes,’ she admitted, trying not to react to the threat of his nearness. ‘Yes, thanks. Much better. I always do when I get around to exercising…’

‘You look better already,’ he assured her. ‘You’ve lost that pinched, tense look, Miss Stuart. It suits you.’

‘Thank you, Mr Fleetwood.’

‘Come on, we’ll finish with a Jacuzzi.’ Swimming easily to the side, he swung himself out on to the tiles, and reached down to catch hold of her arm, pulling her out beside him. The intimate contact was almost too much to bear. Finding herself standing next to him on the side of the pool, clad only in the clinging wet fabric of her black costume, felt as compromising as standing naked with a stranger…

‘You’re shivering,’ he observed, eyeing the goosebumps which had sprung to the surface of her skin. ‘Are you cold again already?’

He was steering her towards the Jacuzzi in the corner of the pool, his fingers warmly confident on her wet skin.

‘No. I’m not cold exactly…it’s…it’s just the contrast…and actually I’ve never been in a Jacuzzi…’ She was babbling nervously, she realised, annoyed with herself.

‘The Jacuzzi is hot.’ He dropped a coin into the slot and gestured into the foaming oval. Hesitating, she stood motionless on the edge as he stepped down into it, sat down and stretched his long, dark body across the width. ‘Come along, Miss Stuart. A new relaxation experience awaits you…’

Could she face joining him in what looked like an unbearably small and intimate space? Dragging air into strained lungs, she forced her wayward emotions under control. She was behaving like a prudish schoolgirl. There were plenty of other people swimming near by. He could be her brother, she reminded herself fiercely. Whatever this stupid shimmer of awareness signified, it certainly couldn’t come to anything. Sheer moral will-power would see to that…And the longer she stood here, with his lidded gaze humorously assessing her hesitation, the longer her body was exposed to that enigmatic male scrutiny…

She put one foot down into the bubbling water. The warmth was bliss after the cool of the swimming-pool. But the steps down were invisible, now that the water was foaming so fiercely. Taking another step in, she missed her footing. With a choked exclamation, she plunged forward. Disappearing under the surface, she burst up again to find herself sprawled ignomini-ously on top of Dominick. The sensation was electrifying.

‘Very interesting,’ he murmured teasingly, ‘but would you mind keeping to your own side?’ As he spoke, she felt strong hands capture her around her waist. She was lifted clear of his body. But not before the sensitive swell of her breasts had made firm contact with the coarse muscle of his chest and abdomen. And not before the slender length of her thighs had become embarrassingly entangled with the rough length of his legs.

‘Sorry…’ She was crimson. She could feel the acute embarrassment staining her cheeks and her neck.

‘Don’t be, I enjoyed it.’ A gleam of laughter lurked in his eyes, but his expression was deadpan as he observed her crumbled composure without compunction. ‘Miss Stuart,’ he added, on a huskier, taunting drawl, ‘would you just relax. Club rules are very strict on sexual antics in the Jacuzzi. I’m not about to rip your costume off and have my wicked way with you, whatever you might imagine.’

The sardonic humour flayed her bruised ego. His amusement was palpable. He was finding her excruciatingly funny, she realised furiously.

Slowly, she turned large grey eyes on him, all her buried resentment swirling to the surface, unbidden.

‘I’m obviously providing tonight’s entertainment,’ she said stiffly. ‘Was that why you insisted I come out with you this evening? Because you wanted some comic relief from your gruelling two weeks in court?’

His eyelids masked his expression as he watched her flushed face.

‘What a touchy young lady you are,’ he mused softly. ‘And where did you get such a low opinion of yourself?’

‘It’s not myself I have the low opinion of…’ The retort burst out, and she trailed off, aghast. Dominick’s expression had altered slightly. The lazy amusement had changed to a cooler, more dissecting curiosity. The shrewd barrister-like penetration was back in his eyes.

‘Let’s get this straight—you’re implying that you have a low opinion of me?’

‘I…’ Hopeless, she realised miserably. Even disregarding his cool arrogance at the suggestion that he could be less than perfect, how she’d ever imagined she could hide her mixed feelings, keep past resentments hidden, she’d never know…

‘Well? What have I done to incur your disapproval, Miss Stuart?’

‘Nothing…really, nothing…’ Apart from being unbearably conceited, domineering, and sadistically mocking, she screamed silently. Just as she imagined his father must have been…

Overcome with panic, she stood up, and tried to wade out of the surging water. He stood up too, and steadied her as she wobbled. His warm hands on her shoulders sent shock-waves of pure, unmistakable sexual desire streaking through her nerve-ends. Choked and breathless, she made it on to the firm surface, and retrieved her towel. The big white bath-sheet had come from the manor house, and she wrapped its fluffy length around herself like a shield.

Dominick had followed her out.

‘I’m going to have a hot shower,’ he said casually, looping his own towel round his neck and switching subjects, to her relief. ‘I recommend you do the same. I’ll meet you in the bar in about half an hour.’

‘Yes. Fine…’

‘Oh, and just to satisfy my curiosity,’ he murmured ruthlessly, catching her by the fold of her towel, where she’d fastened it tightly across her breasts, ‘I’d like to try this…’

Without warning, he dropped his head and kissed her, hungrily, shockingly, on her lips. The combination of the kiss, warm, masculine and demanding, and the contact of his knuckles against the soft swell of her cleavage was terrifyingly intense. Rigid with denial, she stood like a statue, outwardly frozen. Inside, some hidden reactor went into fatal meltdown. The taste of him, the scent of his body, the teasing exploration of his tongue inside her mouth, everything conspired to demolish her defences.

It took every ounce of horrified awareness to push him away. She faced him for a fraught moment, trembling all over. The blue gaze was unrepentantly amused. Her own grey gaze was wide with fury.

‘Please don’t try it again!’ she managed unsteadily. ‘Or you’ll be looking for a new archivist…’

Spinning angrily away, she made for the changing-rooms. Almost blindly, she stumbled to find her soap-bag, and then dived beneath the wonderfully hot showers, shampooing her hair and soaping her whole body.

She felt as if she’d somehow stepped into an impossible nightmare. She’d thought she could handle this complex situation. Now she realised it was going to be much, much harder than she’d imagined. This physical attraction to Dominick was disastrous. It was more than disastrous. It was…it was unthinkable…

She closed her eyes and let the shampoo run down her face, trying to free her mind from its turmoil. She felt hot inside. Hot, and bewildered, and full of self-disgust…If Dominick was her half-brother, that was bad enough. It made him scandalously out of bounds, in all normal societies…But a sense of bitter disloyalty was also stabbing through her. Behind her closed eyelids, it was images of her father that taunted her, in the months before he died.

As long as she could remember, she’d been told that the Fleetwood family had wrecked her parents’ lives. That Sir Robert Fleetwood, Dominick’s father, was to blame for everything that had gone so tragically wrong in her parents’ marriage. And yet now here she was, being taken out by Dominick Fleetwood tonight. And as well as hating him for his cool arrogance and despising him for who he was she was feeling these powerful, overwhelming, swelling bursts of excitement when she was with him…

She rubbed her fingers furiously through her wet hair, rinsing out the last of the bubbles. With her eyelids squeezed shut, she felt as if she was going mad. How could she have been so stupid as to go for this job, knowing what her father had told her about the Fleetwood males?

Emerging from the shower, she wrapped herself in her towel and went to sit on the wooden bench, while she fought to make sense of her feelings…

She was angry with Dominick tonight. But it wasn’t because of anything his father had done to her mother years ago. It wasn’t because he was a Fleetwood. She was angry with him because he made her feel vulnerable, and gauche. And she was angry with him because that physical contact in the Jacuzzi and that taunting kiss had made her quiver inside with a melting clench of desire she’d never felt before…She had to search for the evidence to prove her father’s version of the past. That was the most urgent task she had to undertake. The irony was that before meeting Dominick she’d have found a degree of vengeful satisfaction in proving that Sir Robert was her real father. Now she was so confused, she had no idea what she wanted to find out any more…

‘Have you chosen?’

She glanced up from the menu to find him lazily observing her. They were having pre-dinner drinks at the bar, seated on stools. She took a shaky sip of her dry Martini, and tried to decide what she wanted to eat.

‘Not…not quite.’ She couldn’t even concentrate on the menu. The elaborate black script on cream vellum danced and blurred in front of her eyes.

She was too aware of him, she acknowledged bleakly. He seemed far too close for comfort, even sitting a foot away on an adjacent bar stool. He smelled faintly of some expensive sandalwood aftershave. He looked very large, very male and very intimidating. Very dangerous. She felt as if her breath was restricted in her chest.

‘You’re very…quiet, Miss Stuart,’ he commented idly after another silence had elongated. ‘Are you always so tense? Or are you frightened of me?’

She looked up from the menu warily.

‘Of course I’m not frightened of you.’ She hoped she sounded convincing to him, because she didn’t to herself.

‘Aren’t you?’ The taunting blue gaze examined her face, observing the changes of expression. She felt her temper beginning to fray.

‘We hardly know each other. And we…we’re hardly on the same social circuit! I’m just an employee! Do you expect me to chatter away like an old friend?’ She’d meant to snap the words with cool precision, but instead they came out shakily, even defensively.

Beneath the soft white jersey of her clinging body, she felt her skin beginning to heat nervously. Dominick’s amused gaze slid to her throat, and flicked lower, to the revealing scoop-necked design of her bodice, where the swell of her breasts was clearly visible. Quelling her agitation, she lifted her hand to finger the small silver locket at her neck. There was a picture of her mother inside it. Dad had given it to her, just before he died…

‘I was intrigued by the idea that you hold a low opinion of me, Miss Stuart.’